The Outraged Lonely Detective Investigates the “Green Toenails Murder Mystery”: and eleven other sardonic mysteries

By Charles Schwarz

In this eighth volume of the Lonely Detective Mysteries you'll read about: the Lonely Detective running amok in beauty salons, the Finder deep into a despicable man's three lives as well as having bizarre adventures with Manhattan alligators and rhinos, and the Should man, knee deep in talking heads.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Charles Schwarz
• Release date: Aug 5, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463632420

Book preview

The Smashwords Edition

The Outraged Lonely Detective

Investigates the Green Toenails Murder Mystery

and eleven other sardonic mysteries

Charles E. Schwarz

Copyright © 2007 Charles E. Schwarz

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the author.

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This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment. It may not be resold or given away. If you would like to share this ebook, please purchase an additional copy for each person with whom you want to share it. If you're reading this ebook and did not purchase it, or if it was not purchased for your use only, please return to smashwords and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

* * * * *

Disclaimer

This is a work of fiction, a product of the author's imagination. Any resemblance or similarity to any actual events or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Formatting by Debora Lewis arenapublishing.org

To My Wife Emily,

Without whose support, aid

And encouragement this volume

Would never be.

Contents

Green Toenails Murder Mystery

A Lonely Detective Social Satire Mystery

A naïve Lonely Detective suffers culture shock when emerged in an exclusive Manhattan beauty salon with Brittani Madonna’s toenails as he solves a murder mystery.

Who Hates the Righteous Man

A Lonely Detective Mystery

The near-victim swears he didn’t try to commit suicide. He knows as a righteous man he has no enemies and in fact is loved by all, yet somehow his cocoa was laced with poison.

Murder at the Why What Club

A Should Man Mystery

At a Why What Club’s opulent reception, Ed Hope encounters strange but important members and discovers what the club is all about while solving the murder of a member.

A Good Woman in Danger

A Lonely Detective Mystery

A good woman is hard to find, yet someone is trying to kill her. Only by listening between drinks can the Lonely Detective find out who and why.

The Missing Real Wallet

A Finder Mystery

A Social Satire Mystery

A man of many women and many lives loses his real wallet and is frantic to discover who has it and whether they will reveal who he really is.

The Doubtful Big Billy Bigg’s Defense of Doubt

The evidence is strong against poor Billy Bigg, but is it strong enough to withstand the youth’s lawyer’s explanations? Can doubt withstand proof’s assault or will doubt, no matter how unreasonable, triumph?

Wires at Whispers

Various groups holding flowers, briefcases and paper bags try mightily to overhear conversations involving a planned murder among several strange characters who confer with others in rest rooms.

Snow in Truman’s Study Mystery

A Lonely Detective Mystery

Who killed the respected professor? Students who admired him, colleagues who honored him, or women who loved him? And to do it in a snowstorm?

Principled Principal Murder

A Lonely Detective Mystery

A Murder Bathed in Satire

Someone plucked Daisy’s life from her. Was it because she was so principled? And can the respected principal detective resolve the murder before the outside can?

The Missing Rhino and Alligator Mystery

A Finder Mystery

Why are bizarre objects mysteriously disappearing from the Firewall News office, a company which devises shocking news items to order? And are the missing items linked to a more serious crime?

The Mystery of the Motivated Seller

Can a house be too cheap? Can a seller be too motivated? Can a buyer be too suspicious? Can an investigation show all the Whys to all the Cans?

The Mystery of the Unsigned Letter

A Finder Mystery

Who sends an unsigned love letter to a woman except a shy teenage boy? Only everyone involved is well over thirty and has been there, seen it, done it, didn’t like it, and was hardly bashful about love.

About the Author

GREEN TOENAILS MURDER MYSTERY

A Lonely Detective Social Satire Mystery

As the Lonely Detective related the story to the finder, Ed Debb

As Detective Ed McCoppin and his friend Debb had drinks at McCoppin’s apartment, McCoppin complained, "What can I say? The Green Toenail Murder was so comical, so awash with the ridiculous, and so populated with bizarre characters that no serious senior detective wanted the case so, as usual, by default I was assigned. I was to be assisted by the lovely, inexperienced, ambitious Detective Cissy Snow. With snide smiles my superiors explained this was a ‘happening’ murder, a ‘today’ case that needed a balanced investigative team. I, in my late thirties and experienced, would be balanced by the hot, ‘with it,’ twenty-four-year-old Detective Snow who would be able to understand, relate to, and translate for me America’s contemporary women’s culture.

From my previous experiences I knew Cissy’s game: initially she hints at our having an intimate relationship; her middle game is to feed my interest in her while pumping me for my ideas about the case; and that leads to her final move, using my ideas about the murder as her own while denying any sexual encouragement. She pulls off that part to the extent of expressing shock that I even had such ideas. If I complain of my ill treatment she hints at sexual harassment.

Debb cut McCoppin short. This Cissy sex game crap is just a waste of your time.

McCoppin nodded. I know. Here, as an example, let me tell you the inside story of the infamous Green Toenail Murder.

Debb smiled and leaned forward in his chair. Go for it.

"When we were handed the case, Cissy and I went to the exclusive Salvadore’s Beauty Salon on Fifth Avenue where Percy Curly’s body was discovered. The waiting room was choked with people’s bodies touching other people’s bodies, and not in a nice way, more in a shoving and pushing way. These were the media people, with an odd hustler or two sprinkled in.

"Populating the salon proper were rich Manhattan women who believe they’re dramatis personae in our culture, although you usually find them in cubicles attended by hair stylists and the stylists’ assistants. They were excitedly milling about, whispering to each other. Debb, I’m telling you, with all the exotic, stainless-steel equipment in those cubicles and with the pink-smocked chief stylist and the powder-blue smocked assistants, you’d swear they were in operating rooms doing brain surgery." McCoppin shook his head before he continued.

Anyway, farther back behind swinging bar-type doors was the salon’s large, luxuriously private room containing a solitary treatment chair occupied by a barefoot woman named Brittany Madonna. She was alternately whispering and listening to the suited, fortyish woman with butch hair and the thirtyish guy in a paisley-print shirt and tight pink pants. McCoppin held up one hand. "Yeah, Debb, don’t bother saying it. Both gay.

"I left Cissy gaping at the barefoot Brittany Madonna, the celebrity du jour. She’s known for her electronically enhanced music CDs, which she advertises with soft-porn videos for pre-teenage girls. Her real fame rests on her marriages, divorces and the men she dated as well as her legitimate, illegitimate, step and adopted children. Also, big news in print and TV was the weight she gained or lost, her antics at nightclubs, and whether she’d had a breast enhancement or a nose job.

"The final room in the salon was Salvadore’s office, in the rear. It contained not only mountains of videos and recording and TV gadgets, but Salvadore himself and a couple of Brittany’s managers, with a uniform guarding an open door to a back alley. It was in this room that Curly’s life was cut short. Someone stuck scissors in his neck. Thankfully Curly’s body had already gone out the back door. That allowed me to start questioning some of the principals.

The salon owner, Salvadore himself, jumped to the front of the line, complaining in a phony Italian accent that the murder would ruin his business. In truth, his agent was already on the phone lining up women’s TV talk show interviews. McCoppin paused and raised one finger. "By the way, Salvadore told me the correct way to pronounce his name. With him, the ‘e’ took on a life of its own. It was Salvadoreeee. The ‘e’ never stopped talking.

"After I got the pronunciation correct, I asked about Percy Curly, who he was, what he was doing, why he was doing it, and why he was doing it here.

"A sports coat guy with gray at the sides and black on top, both bad dye jobs, came up to me, hand extended and radiating a happy-to-meet-you smile. He possessed a car salesman’s genuineness and introduced himself as Sidney Cohen, CEO of Cohen Productions.

Cohen said Percy told him he was a professional video and still picture artist. Cohen had hired him last night to handle the taping of this important Brittany Madonna event. Paid him twenty-one hundred cash.

Cash? Debb asked.

McCoppin nodded. "He said Curly was the type of guy that wanted it that way. His regular video man got arrested for drugs, so because he was in a bind, he gave Curly his twenty-one hundred.

"You can see why I wondered what the hell was going on. What was this Brittany Madonna doing that she needed so many people and caused such excitement and confusion?

"Anyway, Cohen expressed shocked that his company’s publicity about this important event in Brittany’s life didn’t touch my mind, move my heart, nor was indelibly imprinted on my conscience. According to him the furthest interiors of Africa were not only informed of this event but were eagerly awaiting the video. According to him, the world needed to be kept informed about all the important events in BM’s life because she’s fabulously famous. And of course, he told me Cohen Productions has sole rights to all video and still photos of this important event and that he expected the police to release all Curly’s work to his company.

"He ominously warned that if our department let anyone else have the smallest item, he would file lawsuits. He said his main concern was pirated videos of the event. ‘Believe me, we’ll prosecute,’ he added.

"There was a little man there too. He was trying to project a large self-image by wearing an electric blue suit and a bright yellow shirt opened at the neck. He introduced himself as Richard Harris, of Harris Professional Management. He said Cohen paid seven figures and ten percent of the net.

"‘Seven figures!’ I said. ‘For what?’

"Harris told me it was for her pedicure event. Then, ignoring my surprise he said he’d gotten this Brittany girl— to her adoring public Brittany Madonna was simply knows as BM— a two-million-dollar book deal. Besides the no-holds-barred tell all book of BM’s personal account of her pedicure experiences, there’s also her personal instruction book for young girls on how to give themselves a professional BM pedicure at home, or how to host a home BM pedicure party.

"Cohen told me there were ten remote cameras. They were in the treatment room, the walls, the ceiling, the floor, and the chair. He said once the editing was done, the voice dubbing was finished for foreign TV distribution, and the still pictures were selected and airbrushed for coffee table books, Cohen Productions would have paid seven figures. He predicted he’d be getting back at least eight, maybe nine figures.

When I humorously asked Cohen if BM was going to do a musical video of the pedicure event, all I got were serious nods from Cohen, as Harris, BM’s manager, assured me the event was going to be the highlight of her video promoting her new song, Even My Toes Love You."

"Suddenly the door from the salon proper opened and the two gays who were previously whispering into BM’s ears entered. Ambrose, just Ambrose, was BM’s personal fashion consultant. The butch babe was Glory ‘Buster’ Spinster, BM’s public affairs manager. Just Ambrose demanded permission for his people to repair the damage to BM’s face from the shock of hearing about Curly’s death and to dress her in a fashion more appropriate for mourning. Whether it was his ear, finger, nose, eyebrow rings, perfume, tight curly permed hair, hands flopping aimlessly about on seemingly broken wrists, or his open shirt showing a hairy navel pierced with four rings I can’t say, but I’m telling you, Debb, while taking a few steps back from him I took pleasure in saying absolutely ‘no’.

"Cohen angrily backed up Ambrose, maintaining that after his people finished writing BM’s tearful script mourning Curly’s death, which she’d read to the TV news cameras expressing her absolute devastation over a good friend’s untimely death, she’d be sending mixed signals to her public if she was still in the bright red lipstick, a short pink skirt and a low-cut tight half tee-shirt with no bra that she wore for the pedicure video.

"I told them they’d have to wait ‘til I got a handle on the situation.

"Debb, as I stood there in that salon surrounded by all the equipment, products, and people dedicated and concerned with the beautification of women’s hair, skin, bodies, toes and finger nails, I felt I was the only sane man in a world populated by people who treat such trivial nonsense with all the importance of gaining heaven and fleeing hell.

"But it gets even more bizarre. Finally tearing herself away from talking to BM, Cissy came into the office and started rummaging around in Curly’s pocket stuff, which the uniforms had laid out on Salvadore’s large smoked-glass desk. Excitedly showing me green crescents covered with minute colored sprinkles, she whispered she’d found them wrapped in tissue in the victim’s wallet. Though Curly’s pockets had been turned out and his wallet thrown on the floor, apparently the killer had never searched the wallet or taken the twenty-one hundred. And he’d ignored the green sparkles.

"Naively I asked Cissy what was she showing me. Laughing at my ignorance she told me they were BM’s toenail clippings. I jumped back as if she was showing me BM’s BM! ‘But you’re handling them!’ I said. She asked if she could keep one or two as souvenirs. I thought she was kidding, but she smiled and said she should at least be able to keep the little toenail since nobody would miss it.

"Telling her certainly no sensible rational person would miss one or even all of them, then asked why any sane man would have them carefully wrapped up in his wallet.

"Without a smile she said Salvadore had purchased the rights to the toenail clippings for over a hundred thousand dollars. He’d planned to sell them on e-bay, although a museum dedicated to rock star memorabilia had offered to buy them for a special BM display.

"Then I asked her how they’d ended up in Curly’s wallet.

"She said that was the mystery. The head pedicurist, Queen Regina, was supposed to collect and save them. Being very valuable they could be a motive for the murder. She thought possibly Curly had stolen the toenail clippings and had been murdered for them.

"So I told her, I said, look Cissy, if BM had her nails cut, why is she and all her handlers still here?’ Well, she thought I was just pathetically ignorant of what’s happening in women’s culture. Today, she said, a fashionable woman with any self-respect doesn’t cut her own toenails. She goes to a toenail specialist who follows the rigorous twenty-step pedicure protocol.

"Seems after washing their feet and removing the old polish they cut and shape the nails just right, then polish them, add a layer of base coat, then expertly apply the final gloss and sprinkles. And that’s only after the woman’s heels, soles and toes are gently rubbed with pumice stone and massaged with special aromatic oils, and her feet are soaked in a vibrating basin of warm water.

Her feet had finished soaking and had been toweled for the application of cuticle lotion just before the orange stick procedure. After that the cuticle trimmer is employed.

What the hell is an orange stick? Debb asked.

McCoppin shook his head. I don’t know, I don’t need to know, and I don’t want to know. Anyway, I interrupted Cissy and sent her to track the cut nails from BM’s toes to Curly’s wallet.

Interrupting, Debb commented, Honesty, how can anyone be interested in this toenail crap? Not even all those diet, makeup, fashion, ‘how-to-get-a-date, sex magazines for preteen girls could be interested in this nonsense.

Agreeing McCoppin continued. Anyway, after I put Cissy on the trail of the toenail cuttings I concentrated on the video part of the case. Cohen showed me the thirteen cameras covering BM’s pedicure. There were wide-angle cameras taking shots from left, center, and right angles as well as close-up cameras targeting each toe as it was washed, oiled, clipped, filed and shaped. There were also close-ups of BM’s face as she was alternately directed to look ecstatic or intense while undergoing the twenty-step procedure. There were cameras on Queen Regina’s perspiring face as he concentrated on cutting each toenail, complete with perspiration supplied by an off-camera spray bottle. Of course, Queen Regina would start the cutting of BM’s ten little piggies only after his washing assistant, Bambi, and Dolphin, his oil girl, had prepped the piggies. In order not to have the cameras intrude on the beautiful naturalness of the procedure, they were remote controlled by Curly from Salvadore’s office.

Queen Regina is a he? a confused Debb interrupted.

Yeah, with shoulder-length, dyed-blond hair, square green granny glasses, hands that never stopped waving at nothing, and a mouth that never stopped talking about nothing.

Debb thought of himself as an experienced man of the world who had seen and heard it all. Man, it’s all so sick! I could never see myself sink so low.

McCoppin laughed. You know, a haircut and style by Salvadore himself goes for four grand, and a pedicure by Queen Regina would set you back three grand. Would you believe Queen Regina drives an eighty thousand-dollar Mercedes? Dolphin, the oil girl, has a new Lexus, and Bambi, the wash girl, has this year’s Caddy.

Shit, McCoppin! No wonder those rich broads are so hot to send our tax money to Africa. They’ve got to live with themselves. Well, everyone knows there’s big money in women’s bodies. Debb paused for a moment. "Maybe Curly was killed for the toenail clippings."

That was my first guess, McCoppin said. But it got confusing when Cissy came back from BM’s private pedicure room carefully holding a batch of shiny crimson toenail clippings with serpentine designs in silver glitter. Said they were the real thing.

So whose nails were in Curly’s wallet? Debb asked.

"I asked Salvadore, Cohen, and BM’s business manager, Harris, but they didn’t know. Neither did Queen Regina, Bambi nor Dolphin. Even Just Ambrose and ‘Buster’ Spinster confessed their bewilderment.

Figuring toenails only grow in one place, I asked to see everyone’s feet. Cohen was reluctant, but the rest were eager. Cohen had normal toenails, but it was no surprise to see Salvadore, Queenie and his assistants sporting rainbow painted toenails. Just Ambrose, BM’s double-gay fashion advisor, was into toe decorations, but I didn’t expect BM’s business manager, Harris, and Buster Spinster to have black-lacquered nails. In that room toenails ran the gambit of colors, but none were purple with sprinkles."

Crap, McCoppin, you actually looked at people’s toenails?

Only from a distance, though Queen Regina did persist in trying to have me hand-examine his piggies.

Shit, that’s disgusting!

McCoppin grinned. "Salvadore made a grab for BM’s red toenails from Cissy’s hand and spilled them all over the